Science Says

I sure miss the days when I knew everything. When I first started this health writing gig, I was sugar snap pea green and 100% convinced that statistical significance was as good as gospel.

Fat would make you fat.

You should invest in a pasta maker and buy into a 3 Men and a Bagel franchise because carbs were all you needed.

Coffee wouldn’t necessarily kill you, but go easy, you know, just in case.

Egg yolks were evil.

Antioxidants were the answer. To everything.

I believed. And I wanted everyone else to believe.

Then a funny thing happened. Scientists discovered well, it wasn’t quite that simple. Though fat packs more calories per gram than either carbs or protein, it provides satiety, slows digestion and insulin response, and in the case of “healthy fat” (an oxymoron back when), it helps control inflammation and keeps your fat burning metabolism running on all cylinders. Carbs weren’t so simple either; they could actually make you fat (no really). Coffee it turns out fights a host of diseases. You can, in fact, eat eggs—including the yolks—every day. And antioxidants? Well, at least one major study had to pull the plug because those taking megadoses of these free-radical fighters ended up getting more cancer. Yeah, not good.

So let’s just say my beliefs have changed. But I haven’t stopped believing.

Today, many moons later, it’s still my job to wade through and decipher and present the most salient scientific findings in cycling. I still get a little aflutter when I read about the performance enhancing powers of beetroot juice, compression wear, and chocolate milk. I nod and smile enthusiastically when my favorite researcher tells me emphatically that X is unequivocally better than Y for improving race performance, even though I just nodded and smiled equally enthusiastically when my other favorite researcher just emphatically and unequivocally proclaimed the polar opposite.

You know why? Because they’re very likely both right. That’s the thorn of medical science. Human beings aren’t test tubes. We have all sorts of pesky traits like gender, ethnicity, family history, and plain old personal DNA that get in the way of A + B always equaling C.

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Instead of getting frustrated by this, I think we should get excited because it opens up a world of possibilities—many ways up the mountain if you will. As we speak, my Twitter feed is blowing up with sports nutrition gems flying out of the inaugural Gatorade Sports Science Institute Expert Panel (#GSSIXP, check it out). What I’ve learned so far:

So, I guess I’ll fire up the rice cooker, put a little beef jerky in my jersey pocket, and save the brew for another day, or at least for later on. In all seriousness, if a new study makes sense, I’ll delve into it, write about it, and give the advice a try, realizing that there are no absolutes.

If it works, fantastic. If it doesn’t, I’ll move on until I find something that does. Maybe I don’t know everything anymore. But I know a whole lot more.